Evil Drew Sharp pauses mid Lions-bashing sentence to chide Red Wings

The Detroit Free Press's Evil Drew Sharp must have felt particularly inspired on Saturday, because he managed to both predict the demise of the Detroit Lions thanks to evening their pre-season record at 1-and-1, but also sound more like a Pittsburgh writer than anything else in lamenting the fact that Brian Rafalski sees no reason to let "The Handshake Incident" go:

The Wings still haven't gotten over the shock of losing a Stanley Cup that looked inevitable after they chased Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in the second period of Game 5. But the Wings scored only two goals in the final two games, losing both, 2-1. If there's anyone who honestly saw that coming, I want to see his stock portfolio. Maybe that's why the Tigers have struggled offensively. Everybody asked them to follow the Wings' championship lead, but they paid attention only to the last two games of the finals.

The Wings' loss stings because it's remembered as a blown chance. Few things bother a competitor more. Even when you've won several championships, like many of the Wings, you deeply mourn every missed opportunity because you cannot assume another chance will come next season.

But the best thing for the Wings might be how they lost. The anger and disappointment eventually morph into motivation. There shouldn't be a lack of hunger, especially considering how some national pundits believe the loss in goal scoring -- regular season, anyway -- of Marian Hossa, Jiri Hudler and Mikael Samuelsson, and the advancing age of the remaining veterans make the Wings less intimidating. And everyone's jumping on the Chicago bandwagon despite the early loss of Hossa to shoulder surgery. The Blackhawks are spending money like a team that knows it must strike quickly in a salary-cap age that prevents teams from keeping all its talent long term.

Getting the players' attention shouldn't be a problem for head coach Mike Babcock once training camp opens in Traverse City in two weeks. There will be no such malady as a championship hangover this time occupying space between the players' ears.

But as ridiculous as Rafalski still complaining about the speed with which Crosby shook hands is, the lingering animosity between the Wings and Penguins provides the NHL with the best news it's had in recent memory. It's got a rivalry between two teams that truly cannot stand each other.

Talk about hitting all the cliched "bases"...Sharp "tells it like it is, even if fans don't want to hear it" (ask Abel to Yzerman about whether he "cares" what people think about his rabble-rousing), hops back onto the bandwagon for a second, and then hops back off after kicking a few shins--but not before claiming that anything that merits lifting his poison pen to write about hockey is "good for the league."

I'm as openly biased as a subjective fan can be, but I'm trying to back off regarding the comparative Zapruder films and heated debate about who shook hands with whom when, and whether someone deserves to be let off the hook because he's "young." If the Wings want to use their handshake line snub to motivate them just as they insisted that Marian Hossa's addition was one of the reasons that they battled through the so-called Stanley Cup hangover and returned to the finals...Let's see if it works for 'em.

Whether the Wings let the handshake incident go doesn't make their loss to Pittsburgh sting any more or any less. It's the bandwagon-hopping by the, "You know, the Wings could prove the naysayers wrong, and that'd be a great story, and they could fall on their faces, which the rest of the league would deem a 'great story,' but they're being babies, but that's still a great story for the league" columns...That kind of commentary got old in June.